


SuperSpy!Buffy & MasterAssassin!Spike

by Hawa_DL



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comics), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: AH - Freeform, AR, AU, All Human, Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/M, Gen, Meta, Warning: Sex Used as a Weapon in Various Ways, though nothing too graphic, though only slightly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-24 06:47:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15625047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawa_DL/pseuds/Hawa_DL
Summary: This is all the backstory I've written to go with a challenge I've posted over on Elysian Fields, which essentially goes as follows:"Buffy (without authorization from her boss) and Spike are both trying to take down the organization Spike used to work for, Spike's old boss is after both him and the organization, Buffy's trying to bring in both Spike (dead or alive) and Spike's old boss (most definitely preferably alive), and poor Spike's just trying to have a good time. I envisioned either a fast paced cat and mouse story or a grand and epic action/adventure. Please feel free to add as many (or as few) characters and as much (or as little) sex as you want."This is what would have come before all of that, at least in my head.





	SuperSpy!Buffy & MasterAssassin!Spike

**Author's Note:**

> I was bitten by a rabid plot bunny several months ago and have not been able to resist doing some serious world/character building for this idea. It's my favorite part of storytelling and I tend to get very involved, but I feel like I've left a lot of room for anybody who feels like taking up the challenge to do their own thing since I only wrote backstory (and even then not always detailed nor for every character), telling how the characters came to be what they are in the main story when their lives had each started so normally. I would be honored if anyone felt like using it as a basis for their story. Whether anyone picks this up or not though I am relieved to say that my muse has finally washed her hands of this.
> 
>  
> 
> The challenge on EF can be found [here](http://dark-solace.org/elysian/modules/challenges/challenges.php?chalid=2731).

### SuperSpy!Buffy & MasterAssassin!Spike

 

 **Buffy Summers** was a 15-year-old high school sophomore living in LA, and trying to be a woman. To her this meant sneaking out one night to go to a UCLA frat party, where she tried desperately not to look like the youngest person there as she talked with the young man who'd invited her, named Liam O'Connor, though he usually went by Angel. She was smitten and he was enchanted and the ugly craziness of the party around them faded away until they were in their own little fairy tale world. He walked her home and hugged her goodbye for long endless moments, both breathing deeply of one another, face pressed to chest and face pressed to crown.

Angel was 18, a freshman at UCLA, and recently all alone in the world. He knew, logically, that if he hadn't been off doing his usual bad son routine of sneaking off to parties and getting drunk, then he would've been home when the robbers came. He would've been rounded up with the rest of his family and he would've learned that his father was not the good man he'd been made to believe he was. He'd been a member of the Irish mob before he sold out to the Italians years ago. Fast forward a wife, a house, and two kids later, and the Irish finally caught up with him, and they took their revenge in blood.

When Angel crept back into the house in the wee hours of the morning, it was to find his entire family cold on the living room floor, executed with ruthless efficiency. Logically, he knew he couldn't blame himself, but of course he did anyway. He loved his little sister and he should have been there to protect her, her and his mother both. He couldn't help hating his father even more for failing to do so. Caught in his grief as he was he didn't pay much mind to how much money his dad's lawyer, Mr. Whistler, said he had inherited, nor did he argue much at the other man's insistence he leave New York for some place far from there, cut all ties with his old life, and start over fresh.

And that's what he'd spent these last couple months in LA trying to do, but it wasn't until Buffy came along that he felt like he might finally be able to do so. She was so full of life; just looking at her he'd been able to see it, holding her he'd been able to feel it, and he wanted desperately for her to breathe some of that life into him.

Buffy knew that Angel was broken, that one of the best things he saw in her was someone to protect, a second chance to be a hero. She didn't mind playing the part of the damsel in distress because she knew what the roles really were, and she knew that Angel knew too, and that was more than enough for her. And so they spent that school year facing Angel's demons together until he became strong and a man and able to fight many battles on his own, and still Buffy often came along anyway—both because they were more like partners now and that's what partners did and because Angel still liked playing the hero from time to time even though it was just pretend and she was kind enough to indulge him.

They had figured out early on that while Buffy had little care one way or the other, parties were definitely not Angel's thing any more. Instead they started taking different kinds of classes together, like martial arts or ballroom dance, even pottery a time or two just so they could laugh at how prodigiously bad they both were at it. They would spend whole days in the park eating picnic foods and taking walks, and practicing Tai Chi or yoga, and sit cuddled together beneath a tree reading stories from their lit course work to each other and working on homework. He admitted, blushing, to liking the ballet, and after taking in a show with him she found she rather liked it too. He talked her into a pair of bowling shoes and she talked him into a pair of ice skates in turn.

There were times in the beginning when she wouldn't hear from him for days at a time, so she'd sneak out at night to his apartment to check on him. She would usually find him passed out on the floor in a puddle of piss and vomit, hand still holding a mostly empty bottle of liquor and tear tracks and snot on his face. And first she would cry a little, but then she would clean her face, square her shoulders, and set to work. He would often wake in the middle of his bath and he would mumble stories of his family to her, crying softly until he fell back asleep. He would wake a few hours later under the covers on his bed. He would find aspirin and water on the bedside table and take them both gratefully, and as he dressed for the day he would find last night's soiled clothes freshly laundered and folded on top of his dresser. Then he would find her in the kitchen, his head bowed low with shame, never finding the strength to push the words _I'm sorry_ past his lips.

She would just kiss him good morning, take him by the hand, and sit him down at the breakfast bar. A cup of coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs and buttered toast would appear in front of him and she'd ask him what classes he had that day. He'd ask her what day it was, and she'd laugh and sigh at the same time, and he'd think the shame would burn a hole straight through him. She'd pack his messenger bag and leave it waiting by the door for him, then she'd come hug him goodbye, tell him with her wise young raccoon eyes that she was fine and that given enough time he would be too, and then she'd be out the door with one final admonishment to get to class, hurrying home to get ready for school herself.

Buffy was never late to school and her grades were the same as always, if not a little better, so when her parents finally confronted her about her sneaking out, and she told them honestly that a friend of hers was quite suddenly made an orphan and an only child a few months ago and they were having rather a rough go of it, they let it go under the condition that she keep them abreast of where she was and how to reach her, that she use the front door instead of leaving her bedroom window unlocked, that she continued to put due time and effort into her school work and cheerleading, and that she make more of an effort to spend some quality time with her little sister, Dawn, who was beginning to feel a bit neglected. When she told Angel, they both agreed that she had the best parents in the world.

As time passed and Angel's episodes became more infrequent, they'd spend their nights in concert halls instead, losing themselves in the music and in each other. And when summer came, it brought with it a freedom neither of them had ever felt before. Not only had they survived the school year, they both had GPAs they could actually be proud of. That was why when she brought Angel to the July 4th family picnic, she introduced him to her parents as _study buddy_ first and _boyfriend_ second. It softened the _older college guy_ blow sufficiently, and soon he was a regular at Sunday dinner. And for a time, everything was perfect.

It was a warm autumn night when they were attacked. They were celebrating the successful completion of their first midterm by going out for Halloween and were walking from the concert hall to Angel's apartment when half a dozen men snatched them off the street and dragged them down an alley. She and Angel fought as hard as they could, one or two of the men falling still at their feet before she was knocked unconscious briefly. When she came to, she was bound and gagged and being dragged into the back of a van by one of the men while the others still standing were swarming Angel, beating him until he stopped moving, then they stepped away to drag the bodies of their fellows into the van. Then one of the men went back to were Angel was laying far too still and took his wallet, phone, and jacket, took a gun from the waistband of his jeans, and shot him point blank three times in the chest.

Buffy screamed around the gag in her mouth, but the man was already back in the van, closing the double doors behind him, and they were all peeling out into the street. Buffy sobbed and stared into the eyes of the dead man next to her, vaguely remembering feeling the collapse of his windpipe beneath her fist after a few quick strikes to his throat, and finishing him off with a stomp while trying to fend off the others, not wanting to risk him getting back up. The men didn't realize he was dead until their first vehicle change 15 minutes later. The one who'd struck her unconscious looked at her with wide disbelieving eyes, saying, “Lyle, man, this bitch killed your brother!” The one who shot Angel, this Lyle, looked at her then with such hate that she couldn't think, couldn't breathe, could do nothing but experience profound terror.

The others had to remind Lyle again and again that his brother knew the risks of jobs like this and that no matter what, they _could not_ damage the merch any more than she already was. Buffy felt sick to her stomach and gave into the urge to start crying again, realizing that she was either going to die a long and painful death at Lyle's hands or she was going to be sold off to some sick, rich bastard as his plaything. By the next vehicle exchange, however, she was all out of tears. She'd never been a damsel in distress before, and she wasn't about to start now.

 

 **Meanwhile,** a comatose Angel was on an operating table in a nearby hospital, being admitted as a John Doe, the assumed victim of a mugging. When the next day came and the high school called around lunch time to say that Buffy never showed up to class that day, Joyce and Hank Summers drove over to Angel's apartment, intending to give both kids the dressing down of their lives, only to find it empty, no signs of breakfast in the sink, the bed cold and still neatly made. They tried calling Angel's cell phone (though of course if this story is taking place during a time when cell phones are common among teenagers, then they tried Buffy's as well) but it never connected. Hearts full of dread, they went down to the precinct to file two missing person reports. It was a couple more days before they found Angel, and by then any trail that might've led to Buffy had gone cold. None of the foreign DNA samples lifted from Angel's body matched any DNA samples in the Cali, FBI, or Interpol databases, and there were no fingerprints.

The Summers family held out hope as best they could but despair grew with each passing day. Their hope won out when, almost three weeks later, they received a call from the detective working Buffy's case telling them that she'd been found on a smuggler's craft a couple miles off the San Francisco coast, along with several other girls and quite a few dead men. How the men ended up dead was unclear, but the girls were able to free themselves and call for help with an emergency radio. They were rescued by the Coast Guard mere hours ago. All the girls were relatively unharmed and were in good health.

The investigation into what had turned out to be a human trafficking ring seemed to drag on and on for the Summers family, who just wanted to put the whole nightmare behind them and take their poor traumatized daughter home and shelter her from the world. But as the days wore on, it became clear that the authorities weren't going to be through with Buffy any time soon. Of all the girls rescued, Buffy was the only one who needed medical treatment for something other than her mental state. She'd only had several minor lacerations and contusions, particularly on her knuckles, and no evidence of rape. Basically, she looked to have been in one hell of a fight, and considering that the only other persons on the ship with similar wounds were all dead now, it was safe to assume that she'd won. The question on everyone's mind though was, _how?_

The other girls all looked at Buffy with the same expression of fear and awe and gratitude, almost worshipful. According to them, they were kept locked in cages in the hold of the ship at all times, except for Buffy, who was fetched daily by a man named Lyle. Word on the ship was that during her abduction, Buffy'd managed a few lucky shots that had killed Lyle's baby brother, Tector, almost instantly. No one had really expected her to put up much of a fight, 5'2'' bottle blonde SoCal cheerleader that she was—or so their guards would share, happy to have someone other than each other to tell it to. All their efforts had really been focused on putting down her much more physically imposing boyfriend. They always tried to grab people while they were alone, but Buffy generally never was, so they decided their best chance would be while he was walking her home at night. They normally wouldn't go after her at all, but someone had paid an awful lot for Buffy Anne Summers specifically so they did the best they could to accommodate. And they were right to think putting the young man down would be a challenge, even more than they'd thought when he turned out to have some fighting skills to go with his bulk. Things started to go further south for them when it became clear that Buffy could hold her own as well. Poor Tector never even had a chance to fight before her fist snapped out and struck him one-two-three square to the throat. He was dying even as he fell, and dead from her booted heel strike long before the fight had finished. While they were busy fighting her down, her boyfriend managed to knock two of them unconscious, while Buffy herself broke the nose and clawed the hell out of anyone that touched her. Once they knocked her out, they beat the boyfriend to within an inch of his life, and then Lyle used a bullet to take the rest. Buffy, who was awake to witness the murder, swore vengeance on them all, while Lyle, once he realized his brother had been killed, swore vengeance on her.

And so it was that Lyle would fetch Buffy from the cage at least once a day and try his damnedest to hurt her without leaving a mark on her body. Buffy was the only one among them denied clothes, and the guards would sometimes talk about being invited to piss on her, to throw food at her, to massage her body however they pleased, to masturbate and spill their seed over her, to watch her blasted with cold water until she gave up screaming for a time and just lay quietly. No matter the humiliations they put her through, Buffy always had the words to say to worm her way under the men's skin, to unnerve them and infuriate them, even seduce them, trying to drive them to mark her flesh and thus incur the wrath of their bosses, who would carve their hides at least seven times more deeply as punishment.

She'd nearly driven Lyle to madness before the time came that Buffy never came back to the cage. That was the night before their rescue, and the girls knew very little of what happened then, only that at some point there were screams and shouts from the men and the startlingly loud sound of gunfire, and when their guards left to see what all was wrong, they never returned either. The fight seemed to be over in ten, maybe fifteen minutes, flat—but then they heard the sound of Lyle screaming and begging, and that seemed to last forever. At last, all was silent and it was another short while before the girls were released by a man none of them had ever seen before.

He was quite fit, if average, in body, his hair was a slick helmet of bleached blond, his eyebrows a more neutral brown, his eyes a startling sky blue, his roguish smile charming and disarming, helped along by a relaxed baritone in a South London accent. When the girls left the hold, they saw blood aplenty but no bodies, and when they reached the deck, all they saw was Buffy, wet and naked as she wrung excess water from her hair, and shining in the early morning sun as the last of the red bled from the sky. The man made a gesture for them to go on and so they all rushed toward Buffy and huddled behind her, only then really noticing her cuts and bruises.

Buffy, however, paid them little mind. The man asked if she'd had a nice swim and Buffy nodded and said that he was right, she had needed it. He nodded and asked if she “had it from here.” She said yeah, she did, thanks for lending a hand. And he said, “Yeah, well, you're not welcome. I hardly even clean up my own messes, you're off your bird if you ever think I'll be helping you with yours again.” She just laughed and waved him off, telling him to go find some damsels in distress elsewhere, for there were none here. He scoffed and said he's not “some bloody knight in shining armor,” that he was a cold blooded killer dammit. Buffy shrugged and said, “Cold, sure, but hardly freezing.” He laughed, said, “Take care, little slayer,” and climbed down over the side of the boat and onto a jet ski tethered there, and then he was speeding off toward land. Buffy then turned to the girls and asked them to stay put while she went to find some clothes for herself and an emergency radio. And then the coast guard was there in what seemed like no time at all and the whole hellish thing was officially over.

What the girls didn't know was that the bodies of the traffickers had all been found in a pile in the captain's cabin, all save one who was naked, hogtied, and strung up from the ceiling. His cock and balls had been removed, rather crudely and inefficiently. His balls were found in his stomach, his cock in his throat. There was also a bruise on the side of his head consistent with a hammer, the very same one which had beaten all his fellows to death, and with which he had been brutally raped prior to his castration. The labs suspected he had probably been made to eat his own balls first, sodomized second, castrated and asphyxiated third, and posed and hung last. The hammer had been left in his body, and the area around the handle and the upper thighs and buttocks were the only places on the entire ship that had been wiped down with bleach. They had tried to acquire samples from inside the anus but bleach had been found there too, and any samples that might have been found there were thoroughly destroyed.

The Summers were appropriately horrified as they listened to the police interrogate their eldest daughter about the unknown blond man's role in events, what he said to her while they were alone, and was it he who sodomized Lyle Gorch with a hammer or was it Buffy herself as revenge? Who killed Gorch by making him choke on his own penis? Who made him swallow his own testicles? At first, Buffy's tactic was stone-cold silence, and she kept it up for almost a week until finally boredom and impatience caused her to start speaking, just never about anything useful. The San Francisco police eventually arrested her on suspicion of murder though after her booking the prosecutor held off on pressing charges in the hopes that the pressure would get her to talk, but she never did. Buffy wouldn't even talk to her defense attorney. Throughout it all she was calm, unruffled, and unconcerned with authority figures save her parents, and almost completely unaffected by the events of the last few weeks that anyone could tell, save the child psychologist on the case. It was plain to him that Buffy's seeming unaffectedness was merely a presentation of sociopathy, which was a perfectly understandable survival technique in any extreme condition.

(It essentially boiled down to dehumanizing one's 'enemy' to a certain degree in order to better do that which must be done. It was what allowed the poor and the hungry to steal without remorse. What allowed soldiers to follow orders that would kill not just enemy combatants, but their families and their neighbors and those who merely look like them as well. 'They are my enemy,' the reasoning went, 'and as such they are not worthy of the same considerations that mine and I are worthy of—in fact, they are worthy of no considerations at all. Whatever they get is whatever they deserve, and I have done nothing worthy of guilt.' Most often people felt some of the burden of guilt anyway, but sociopathy was a frequent enough result as well, exhibit A in this case being poor Buffy Summers.)

And while there were initially signs of genuine love and respect from her toward her parents, the psychologist could easily see all that change for Buffy on the day when her parents asked her to cooperate with the police so she wouldn't be charged with murder. It was painful to see, like watching a child's dreams dashed into bits, to see Buffy's joy in them die and decay into despair, then disappear altogether into her characteristic stone-cold determination as she mentally reassigned her parents from _safe place_ to _enemy camp_ in mere moments. She asked them to leave, and then he watched as she cried silently for a while, mourning the dead dream, before pulling herself together and sitting silently once more. It was the next day when they finally seemed to get a break with her little sister, Dawn.

Buffy had been bored out of her mind by the time they sicced Dawn on her, and though she was outraged that they'd stooped so low as to use her little sister against her, she was more than glad for the pleasant company. For a while she was able to distract Dawn with questions about what had been going on while she was away. This was when she learned that Angel was still alive, in a coma but alive. She also learned that her parents had been too busy fighting each other to be there for Dawn properly, so she held her little sister close and gave her the much needed comfort she'd been missing for the last month or so. That was when Dawn finally asked the question the cops had told her: “Why won't you answer the detectives' questions, Buffy? I just want this all over. I just want you to come back home.” Buffy sighed and finally said, “They don't actually want to know what happened to me, Dawnie. Not really. They just want to end that trafficking ring—which, you know, is cool and all, but I can't help them with that. I only know the boat, and the boat is a dead end. I know for a fact they'll learn all I know and more from the forensics anyway, so I'll just keep my experiences to myself.” It was a little bit of a lie, but it's not like she was under oath or anything.

Eventually, Buffy's defense attorney talked the prosecutor out of pressing charges by emphasizing the presence of the unknown blond man, even though the psychologist had admitted that there was every possibility she might have been mentally capable of vengeance, for lack of a better word, though whether physically so was still indeterminate. And so law enforcement had to bow before the mountain that was her stubborn silence, and she was finally allowed to go home to LA with her family, though not before the psychologist recommended to her parents that she visit a trauma counselor as she appeared to be exhibiting a few sociopathic traits which were probably developed as a necessity over the course of the harrowing events of the last several weeks, and which with the proper treatment could revert to normal. So she went to see the recommended psychologist, and the one she recommended, and the one he recommended, but brutal Buffy stayed the same. The only time her old self emerged was when she went to visit Angel, and even then she rather felt that she was putting on a face. It was simply her way of trying to bring him back, but with each week that passed it became less about healing him and more about letting him go. Then came the asylum. There were no visits to Angel after that. _Everything_ was different after that.

Going back to school for the second semester had been rough for Buffy, both because her peers scented blood in the water and because her experiences had left her with a bloodlust so intense it frightened her, though she tried desperately to keep the severity of it to herself, to varying degrees of success. She quit cheerleading and her grades began a steady decline in addition to her now spotty attendance. She tried to channel her new urges into illegal UF and MMA fights, but it was inevitable that they would begin to surface at school in response to her classmates' relentless need for gossip. Her parents were fighting near constantly, she was suspended multiple times, and when she was finally expelled for putting another student in the hospital, Buffy decided to take a break from it all and ran off with a fellow fighter named Pike to Las Vegas for a couple weeks. They had a good time together and briefly explored the whole friends with benefits thing before deciding to drop it and just keep things simple. Upon returning home, however, she found that Dawn had gone snooping through her room and had read her diary, in which Buffy had admitted to killing every last one of the kidnappers and to castrating and sodomizing her tormentor. The blond Brit had only untied her and drawn the men's gunfire unto himself so as to give her the chance to take them out by surprise. She had described everything with such detail and passion and nostalgia that Dawn was frankly disturbed, so she shared the find with her parents who were likewise disturbed. They didn't want Buffy to face criminal charges so they decided to keep the facts of things to themselves, but they were firm in their decision to have Buffy committed upon her return home.

Once in the institution, no matter how Buffy tried to dance to her doctor's tune, he just would not let her go. He changed her diagnosis and her medicines frequently, and the staff punished her for her admittedly zealous defense of her person from those perverts working there who thought to take advantage of her. They failed in these pursuits but she also failed in getting others to believe her accusations. She had about properly lost her mind by the summer, when the agents from Interpol finally came for her.

They were after the blond man—Spike, they called him. He was a very bad man apparently, who had murdered a great many people the world over, and they would very much appreciate any information she could give them. They hadn't been expecting much, but she was lucid enough to say that the meds she was currently on stopped her thinking straight or remembering clearly and would they please please _please_ get her off them. She said they could ask for her help once her mind was hers again. It took the better part of a month wean her off everything but her vitamins, and she remained locked in solitary confinement the majority of that time out of fear of her vast potential for violence, though thankfully she remained unrestrained. When the agents came back, she was back to brutal Buffy at her finest, and the first question out of her mouth was what was in it for her. They said that they could spring her from the asylum, relocate her, have her record expunged. Make it so that, on paper at least, the last 6-8 months had never happened. She said yes to all of this and then surprised them by asking for a job.

“He's taking out that ring, you know. I can do what he does, just for you guys. I'll tell you every last detail, but I want in.”

They told her to apply after she had a few years of national law enforcement experience under her belt, but she said that wasn't good enough. She needed to disappear, she said, and she needed to do what he did. They recommended the CIA, but, she argued, the CIA wasn't there asking her for info, were they? So the agents left and told their C.O. the sitch, and on up the chain it went. In the course of investigating whether she was sane enough to even consider taking on, it came out that Buffy's doctor was actually being paid quite a large sum to keep her hospitalized, so they ended up having to call in one of their own to give her an eval. There were some concerning signs of sociopathy though she was quite skilled at playing at believing in everything from the unspoken to the written laws of society—“most probably a skill learned and refined by trying to talk her way out of this hellhole”—but nothing to indicate that she had any mental problems or would be otherwise unfit for duty in anyway whatsoever. So the director approved the deal provided she pass training at Quantico upon graduation from a post-secondary school. Director Travers then called in a favor with the US Marshals to help hide her and her family in plain sight upon her release from the asylum. And, upon reading the transcript from (and then promptly watching) the interview in which Buffy Summers related in great detail every happening of her abduction, torture, and escape, he made one last call to his old MI6 protégé, Rupert Giles, saying only, “There's someone I think you should meet.”

 

 **William Pratt** was 17 when his mother passed away. She had been sick for most of his life, so most of his life had been spent taking care of her. And so, when she passed, Will did the only thing it made sense to him to do at the time: he packed a bag and took off with his girlfriend to take care of her instead.

Drusilla had been his girlfriend for almost a year at this point, pretty much ever since her boss had come to London on business and taken her with him as a reward for something or other— _good behavior_ , she'd called it. He knew that she was caught up deep in some sort of gang and that she was trying to recruit him. He'd been resistant so far, though oddly flattered that she thought him capable of flourishing at a life of crime. He by no means considered himself unfit, but he'd never been in a fight before in his life and he doubted he'd fair well, though to hear Dru tell it, he'd be magnificent with only a little practice.

It all came down to the way he saw himself, he supposed. He'd look in the mirror and the person looking back always seemed so soft. Maybe it was the floppy caramel brown curls, or maybe the glasses. Perhaps it was just the way he kept his head down all the time. And just maybe it was because he knew that all his window dressing of black jeans, Doc Martens, and rock band T-shirts would never be enough to hide his soft heart from anyone who cared to look, no matter how thick public school had made his skin become.

Now, though, he didn't see any reason to deny Dru any longer. He may have been good at school but he didn't particularly enjoy it, and with his mother gone, Dru was all he had. So when she told him her boss was heading back to Munich and was taking her with him, Will followed. Let these people chew him up and spit him out, he figured. So what? They would never part him from her side.

And chew him up and spit him out they did. The Aurelius initiation rites were cruelty beyond measure, so much so that he thought he'd be mad as his girl by the time they were through, a prospect which Dru found oddly delightful. He had so much innocent (and not so innocent) blood on his hands by the end that he knew the stain would never come clean, and he was surprised at how little this upset him, at how numb he'd become to it all. Though, then again, maybe he shouldn't be. After all, he did it for love.

(And this was how he learned that his romantic nature had a dark side. He actually rather enjoyed it. It made him feel like a man for the very first time.)

Dru had told him that he could be her knight, come to rescue her. It wasn't until their first night in Germany, when he saw her and her boss, Heinrich Nest, together for the first time, that he realized she'd meant it literally. Watching her kneel at Nest's feet, nuzzling his cock through his trousers while he petted her hair—like she was his fucking pet—was all it took to decide him: he would do _whatever_ it took to infiltrate their ranks, break Dru out, and tear Aurelius apart.

By the time he was a fully fledged member of Aurelius' ranks, he'd only ever truly tortured someone once, his bosses having quickly learned that his strengths lay elsewhere. Still, it had been creative and amusing to watch, if not terribly effective. It was a show Nest and his captains were sure to reminisce on for many years to come, and so they took to calling him Spike in remembrance.

Dru's fondness for Spike brought him to Nest's attention when he was only just settling into his job as an enforcer and occasional drug runner. He watched closely as Spike's partner, Sam Lawson, encouraged him to find a look that matched his name, watched as he warmed up to the other men and the other men warmed up to him, watched him blossom into a boisterous and gleeful yet angry young cynic. He was the life of the party before long, and yet he completed his every task flawlessly, with a focus that was unmatched by any other. He also watched him fall more and more in love with his favorite slave with every passing day.

It was now six months after Spike had joined their ranks, and Sam and a bunch of the others had taken him out bar crawling to celebrate his 18th birthday. The group had broken up to head their separate ways, and Spike went to headquarters to meet up with Dru and spend the rest of the night with her. But when he got there, he could hardly even move or see a thing for the crowd in the common room. There was a lot of cheering and jeering and hooting and hollering, but over it all was a high-pitched wail, rising almost to a scream, that ended on a sob of, “ _More!_ ”

It was Drusilla's voice.

His heart a lump in his throat, Spike pushed his way to the front of the throng and saw his boss fucking his girl raw over the table. Her whole body was trembling, her toes barely touching the floor, her fingers were scrambling for purchase, her pale skin littered with red hand prints. Tears streamed endlessly down her face, and still all she did was beg for more. Nest found him quickly and wrapped an arm around his shoulders before he could intervene and drew him in tight to his side, and when he spoke his breath brushed Spike's ear.

“Why, hello, birthday boy! Did you have a nice night?”

When Nest squeezed his shoulder, Spike gave a jerk of a nod, body taut, eyes unblinking. “Yes, sir.”

“Good! I am glad for this. As you see, we have had fun too, yes? Ha ha!”

“I see, sir.”

“You know, Spike, I have been watching you.”

“Sir?”

“You do great work for me. You have so much potential. This is what I see. To help you reach it, I have new job for you. If you serve me well in this, I just might consider giving her to you to keep.”

As Nest spoke, Spike's boss finished inside Dru and pulled out, only for another man to take his place. Spike had to shake his head to focus on what the crime boss was saying, but still all he could manage was, “Sir?”

“Oh, I know well how you love my Drusilla, boy. And, as you see, I do not mind to share. I just needed you to see exactly what she is.”

“And what is she? Sir.”

“Why, she is my slave, of course, my favorite, as she has been for the last decade. She was so little then, barely ten years old if I had to guess. There is no part of her old life left in her, save that god-awful accent. I tried to train the cockney out of her, but, as you see, I had only mixed results at best.

“The only point I'm trying to make to you, Spike, is that she is mine; though if you serve me well, then one day she could be yours. Until then, I will share her with you. You like this, yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, boy. Well, go on then, take your turn!”

“I'd rather have my time with her in private, sir, if it's not too much to ask.”

“Of course not. Someone has to clean this mess up after all, might as well be you! Come see me at ten tomorrow night, we talk business.”

“Yes, sir.”

And Spike just stood and watched as Nest knelt on the table in front of his girl. Her face was a rictus of agony until Nest carded his fingers through her hair, then a peace like none Spike had ever seen before came over her, and he knew then that Nest had probably seriously understated just how _his_ Dru was. It seemed Nest was only letting the captains have a go at her, and Spike saw that no matter how drunk they might be or how rough they were with her, they were careful to never make her bleed. Spike hated to think how often they'd put on shows like this before. Nest asked him to go fetch him a vodka, neat, and as Spike handed it over he got a really close look at Dru's face: her eyes were closed and she seemed to be in a place beyond pain at this point, a place beyond any of them, where all she felt was bliss.

Most of the captains came back for seconds, many for thirds, and it went on for so long that Spike wondered at why so many people were still there. Then the captains started leaving; and when the last was through, Nest hauled Dru up by her hair, ignoring her whimpers as he dragged her off the table and threw her to the floor at Spike's feet. He just said, “Have at it, boys,” and then he left too.

There was a shout of _cum party!_ from somewhere behind him and then men were swarming in on them, whipping out their pricks and starting to jerk off, and Spike decided to get out of there sharpish. He stood around outside chain smoking with shaking hands for over an hour before he thought most everyone had left. When he went back in, there were three men still there, standing about, taking a piss on her. Spike told them to shove off already and let him start cleaning. They laughed and shrugged and shook off and tucked away and zipped up and left.

Spike washed Dru off as best he could at the sink in the bathroom, and then he got her into his duster when there was no sign of her clothes anywhere. He was almost surprised, and strangely relieved, to see her cry. Her tears were silent, her quakes almost nonexistent, and it wasn't long after she was covered that she fell asleep in his arms. Not once did she look him in the eye. He made quick work of the common room, then called them a ride back to his place. Once there, he soaked her in a bath of warm water and Epsom salt for nearly an hour. He washed and combed and plaited her hair, massaged her with oil, and dressed her in a HIM T-shirt. And through it all she slept.

So he tucked her into his bed, grabbed a bowl of ice chips, and crawled under the covers to settle in between her thighs. He spent all the rest of the night and well into the morning there, lapping gently at her swollen folds and puffy anus with his frigid tongue, sometimes drawing the ice over them directly to give the feeling in his mouth a chance to return, only ever moving to re-up on ice. Occasionally Dru would rouse slightly, sometimes crying softly, others cresting gently into orgasm, but every time calling his name and petting his hair and rolling her hips further toward his face. Every time she came, she spilled other men's seed into his mouth, and he cried tears of his own with every swallow. Still he kept on, didn't even consider stopping until long after the taste of semen had been washed away down his throat with the taste of _her_ , and even then it was only a passing thought.

He didn't even remember falling asleep in the end, there was just the waking up in the late afternoon with his head pillowed in the hollow of her hip, her fingers combing through his hair. It took him a moment to realize that she was humming “Blackbird” by the Beatles what with how often she kept changing key. He was quick to give her clit a little suckle, wanting to distract her from her melancholy, and light though it was, it still made her whole body tremble.

He asked her if she needed any aspirin, but she just said, “I'm so sorry, my love,” so he asked what the hell for. She told him that yesterday was his birthday and that she'd ruined it. She'd wanted her body to be all his that day, as it was the only present she knew to give, and she couldn't even manage that. And then instead of her pampering him, he had to spend hours cricking his neck and breaking his back taking care of her, and it was all so wrong, and she was so, so sorry. He told her to can her nonsense, that Nest had her gang raped to teach them both a lesson, and that was hardly her fault. She said, “But is it really rape if I asked for it?”

“S'pose it depends on why you asked for it, love?”

“'Cause Master told me to.”

“Well, did you want it at all?”

“Not as such, no.”

“And did you mind it? 'Cause I s'pose having sex that you don't exactly want but don't particularly mind in't _really_ —”

“Oh, but, William, I minded it terribly. But, I'm still a good girl, aren't I?”

They were both crying openly now, but Spike managed a smile and said, “You _are_ good, Dru. The best.”

“I was made to take cock, born to love it. But I didn't last night. I don't a lot. But I never say so, I never let on, so that's alright, isn't it? I'm still a good girl? That's not too much like cheating, is it? Is it?”

“No, love, ts'not cheating at all. That's exactly how to play the game. You're such a good girl, Dru.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“You're the best even. Better'n me. 'Nd you know the rules're diff'rent 'tween you 'nd me, yeah?”

“Yes, of course, 'cause in _our_ game, you're the knight, and I'm the princess, and you're here to slay my dragon and ride off with me into the sunset.”

“Exactly right, love. You're so smart too. 'Nd you know, anything the knight does for the princess is the only the least of what she deserves.”

“And anything the princess does for the knight?”

“Is far more than he'd ever dreamed to be worthy of before.”

“Well,” she said, “it was my loyal brave knight's birthday yesterday, and he has proven himself worthy in my eyes.”

Dru made love to him then for the first (and only) time, somehow managing the feat with her mouth alone. It was the most memorable blowjob of his life, and he wasn't ashamed to say it brought tears to his eyes. It was the closest she would ever get to saying _I love you_.

That night, Nest told him that he thought Spike had the makings of an excellent assassin and had Luke, Spike's boss's boss, take him under his wing. The man's tutelage was brutal but efficient, and it was barely a year before Luke pronounced Spike ready to fly solo. Spike used the year to learn all he could about not only Aurelius' orders of operations but also Dru's origins. The information wasn't actually hard to find, it was just difficult keeping it quiet, though thankfully he was able to get most of it straight from Dru, who remembered rather more than either of them thought Nest would like. She knew she was born Edith Braxton on November 3rd, year unknown, to Mary Braxton, probably in London as she couldn't remember ever living anywhere else. No father. Her mother was a madwoman and an addict, a beggar and sometimes a whore. Dru was a pickpocket. They couldn't get enough to keep their apartment. She'd been on her way back from thieving to yet another crack house when the Aurelian traffickers had grabbed her. It was more than enough info for him to find her birth certificate. She was actually older than him, by a year and nearly six months. Her mother had been a paranoid schizophrenic who was alone in the world, couldn't hold down a job, and fell through social service's cracks. She seemed to have tried her best, but it wasn't nearly enough, and when she died of an overdose not long after Dru's abduction there wasn't a soul left alive to miss her daughter.

During this year, Nest took Dru on business with him to New York City for a few months. There he met and was charmed by a hooker named Darla Ainsley. Darla was only 18, and she was bloodthirsty. She enjoyed her work, said it was her way of claiming back her body after some asshole jock had raped her nearly two years ago when she was still in school, a cheerleader in her sophomore year. With Nest's encouragement, she finally went looking for revenge only to find that his entire family had just been murdered in a home invasion gone wrong and that he'd disappeared. Word on the street was that it was actually the Irish who'd done the deed, and so Nest made a call on her behalf and got them to agree to let him know if they ever found Liam “Angel” O'Connor. He won her eternal loyalty for that alone. When Nest and Dru came back to Munich, Darla came with them and began shadowing Nest as his official protégé.

Spike and Dru were only in the same city for about a month before Spike had to start traveling the globe on his assignments. The newfound freedom made it infinitely easier for him to prepare to make his move on Nest. In only eight months, he accrued enough contacts, boltholes, and wealth that he felt confident in his ability to take Dru so they could strike out on their own. They decided to make their move at the New Year's Eve party, as Nest tended to retreat to his office during the countdown to ring in the new year alone. Spike was able to convince Sam Lawson to help secure their escape route. In the end, it went off near flawlessly, save for a moment or two when Spike thought Dru might not be able to go through with pulling the trigger on her master and he'd have to step in and do it himself, but do it she did and was the better for it. Between the noise of the clock striking midnight at the party and the silencer on the gun and Sam keeping the hall clear, no one heard the gunshot and the three of them were well away before Darla and Luke discovered Nest's body.

The SNAFU came when Dru suddenly decided they needed to go free the four other girls Nest kept as slaves in his home. They weren't as well-trained or as well-loved by him as Dru had been so they remained locked in his home at all times. Knowing that discovery of their treachery was imminent, Spike decided not to waste time arguing about it, sent Sam on his way, and took Dru with him to Nest's home in the hope that the guards there had not yet been put on alert. They were in luck, and Dru had already gone to get the girls when the call came, and Spike had already started making his silent way through the skeleton crew by then. The ensuing firefight was brief and left him blessedly unscathed because they _did not_ have time to sanitize the scene before they left, though he did rob the place, just for kicks. Dru led the girls, all in their early teens and younger, out to the van Spike had stolen from the guards, and the two made quick work of dropping them out in front of the nearest police station, then they made their way toward freedom.

 

 **Upon her discharge** from the asylum, Buffy finally learned why none of her family had been by to visit her.

The Summers family had been through the wringer ever since Buffy had been put away. Joyce and Dawn had thought the influx of threatening phone calls and thugs loitering outside their home and following them about had all been for Buffy. Hank, however, knew otherwise, and as soon as the harassment started he bribed Buffy's doctor into keeping her there indefinitely, thinking they wouldn't be able to get to her again there. He talked his wife out of contacting either the police or the asylum, on the grounds of trying to keep Buffy safe. It was a good excuse because it was at least partway true, though on the whole he was rather more concerned with saving his own hide at the moment.

Hank had never said a word to anyone, but he'd received a ransom note a day after Buffy's abduction and had been in the midst of a very cruelly drawn out series of negotiations for her return when Buffy had made the whole thing moot. (They'd asked for him to turn in both himself and what he'd stolen in exchange for his daughter's safe return, but wouldn't agree to allow him confirmation of said safe return or even confirm for him their identities and just what it was they wanted returned, and as much as he loved Buffy, he was neither an idiot nor especially willing to die, and he couldn't contact the cops without implicating himself in other crimes.) Now, the strange men following him and his family, and hanging around outside their house at all hours, and the anonymous phone calls with no one on the other end, and most importantly his daughter's initial abduction were all connected. And as far as Hank knew, this could only mean one thing: one of his clients that he'd screwed over was looking for a little (or a whole lot of) payback.

The whole _screwing clients over_ thing had started as a way for Hank to get some of his own back for having to provide legal counsel to people he despised for being morally bankrupt criminals, and ended with him doing it because he had now in actuality _become_ a morally bankrupt criminal. He'd even started cheating on his wife in recent years because things like fidelity just didn't seem that important anymore. He'd pissed off a great many people in his 20 years as a lawyer at Wolfram and Hart, but he figured the person with the biggest bone to pick with him currently was one Richard Wilkins III.

Wilkins was the mayor of a small town about two hours north of LA called Sunnydale. Just looking at the place wouldn't tell you it was being run by a gang of xenophobic white supremacists, but the lack of diversity there would become clear upon closer inspection, especially considering how close it was to the Mexican border. The Wilkins family was there when the city was founded over a hundred years ago, and they'd maintained control of it for all that time. Most of the residents were happy to ignore this, happy to trust in the family's picture of beneficence and not bothering to question why things were the way they were. Those who did notice things were amiss were more likely to just leave town than bother messing with the status quo. Those who did tended to disappear. Anyone non-white looking to move or work there was was subtly and craftily intimidated into changing their minds. Those stubborn enough to live there anyway always left of their own volition or disappeared inside of a year, _always_.

What with their comfortable and secure hold on the town, the Wilkins family took to putting their fingers in a great many criminal pies. No matter what the trade though, they always wrote their transactions down in a ledger, listing given names and account numbers and exact dollar amounts and the dates and wherefores of it all. As long as there had been a Sunnydale there had been one—and _only_ one—Wilkins family ledger per fiscal year, always hidden in a secure safe, the knowledge of its existence kept quiet.

That is, until Hank Summers came along and made a digital copy of the most recent ten.

He hadn't even realized Wilkins knew the copies had been made. He thought he'd been rather sneaky about it. He'd only taken them in case he needed leverage over his client at some point in the future, and such a time had not yet come, but it seemed the mayor of Sunnydale was onto him anyway. Then freaking Interpol of all agencies started poking their noses into Buffy's, and consequently _his_ , business before he could find a way to peacefully resolve things with Wilkins without involving law enforcement, so when his oldest was released from the mental institution he greeted her with her favorite stuffed animal, a pig named Mr. Gordo, in which he'd hidden the flashdrive containing the ledgers, and then promptly ran off overseas, his latest mistress on his arm and not a word of explanation to his family, never to be seen or heard from by the Summers women again.

Buffy couldn't claim to be surprised by the man her father had turned out to be, though she was deeply disappointed all the same. Her mother too she was unimpressed with, what with poor Dawnie's desperate relief to see her upon her release, claiming that it was only now that she felt safe. Buffy felt it was not only terribly unfair but also awfully stupid of her parents to place the burden of providing stability and security for Dawn on her, what with her life being absolutely _insane_ these last couple of years, fraught with danger and drama as it's been. Buffy didn't say a word about it either way, but she practically radiated contempt which Joyce duly noted and swore to do something about.

(And Joyce really did try to get better about taking care of her daughters, though it didn't really happen until late that fall after _The Ted Incident_ , that is to say that time when Joyce didn't believe Dawn when she said her mother's new boyfriend was molesting her and Buffy had no choice but to force a confrontation about it between the two adults while Dawnie hid in an upstairs closet, a confrontation which Ted quickly turned violent and which Buffy then quickly turned deadly. Giles taught Buffy how to get rid of a body and it was never mentioned again.)

But back to where we left off that summer. US Marshals told the Summers women that Interpol and LAPD would continue to investigate the harassment, Hank's suspicious disappearance, and Buffy's unlawful institutionalization, but that in the mean time it would be best if they went into hiding. And so they became Giselle “Jill”, Dolly, and Lainie Fraiser, who upon the death of their father/husband Harold Fraiser, decided to get a house with his sister, Jennifer Fraiser, in a small town called Sunnydale in order to start fresh (Jenny Fraiser really being US Marshal Jenny Calendar). Buffy requested of her mother that she be tutored privately instead of trying to brave public school again (having been informed while still in the asylum that her contact from Interpol would find her by responding to such an ad) and Joyce thought it a brilliant idea. Thus Rupert Giles, a used bookstore owner and also a new resident of Sunnydale, agreed to become Buffy's (Lainie's) tutor to help her work toward her GED, while Dawn (Dolly) enrolled in 5th grade at the local public school and Joyce (Jill) tried her hand at being a business owner with surprising success (and Joyce figured to herself that she'd rather like to settle in Sunnydale provided they all lived through it).

Giles informed Buffy that there was in fact no one at all investigating her family's case at the moment, that it was being left up to her to solve, under his guidance of course, and with pay upon satisfactory completion of the mission. Almost all of her training was to be like this, in the field, save for a post-secondary degree of her choice and a stint at the FBI Academy in Quantico to assist in building various cover identities for her future use. She would be without a country, without a home, without a name by the time they were through, a mercenary secretly (and illegally) kept on retainer by Interpol and of whom there would be no record. This suited Buffy perfectly. Giles also said that he came out of retirement and traveled to the other side of the earth for her, so she better not disappoint him.

Buffy was, in Giles' frank opinion, an insolent spoiled brat. She was also damned good. Flippant and cheeky as she was, she was more driven and focused than she seemed on first glance, and she finished her GED by the time Dawn went on winter break (in spite of her making far more friends and spending far more time socializing than Giles was comfortable with) in order to devote more time to her investigation. Interpol had only left them with their top suspect, a Richard Wilkins III, hence their relocation to Sunnydale. When Buffy learned that one of her new best friends, Faith Lehane, was about to be officially adopted by him, she didn't hesitate to use their relationship to her advantage.

Faith was about a year Buffy's junior and was a runaway, a native of Boston, who'd made it all the way to LA before falling in with Wilkins. She absolutely refused to go back to high school despite the mayor's urging and was therefore the only other teen in Sunnydale who didn't spend all day sitting in class. Buffy was able to manipulate Faith (under the pretense of harmless curiosity) into unwittingly helping her discover that Hank had stolen sensitive information from the mayor, and that Wilkins wanted the files recovered and anyone who'd had contact with them neutralized. In the process, however, Faith discovered Buffy's true identity and that Wilkins was after her father and that Buffy had played her into betraying the one person in her life who'd ever been in her corner. So they fought, which ended with Buffy running her through with her own knife before sanitizing and fleeing the scene, believing the other girl dead.

Knowing discovery was now imminent, Buffy had her other best friend, Willow Rosenberg—a computer wiz and frequent visitor of the bookstore—crack the encryptions on the flashdrive she found stuffed in Mr. Gordo (she'd thought it strange how her father had given her something she already owned as a parting/welcome home/sorry for locking you up in the loony bin gift). As the mayor realized just what (and _who_ ) had happened to Faith to put her in a coma, Willow was able to send the files to the appropriate authorities anonymously while Wilkins mobilized his forces for an all-out assault on Buffy and her family. Buffy, Jenny, and Giles held their own in the ensuing firefight until help arrived while Joyce and Dawn hid, but Jenny—with whom Giles had fallen in love quite by accident—had been mortally wounded and died en route to the hospital.

Giles considered the mission to have been appallingly dismal, only saved from being a complete and abject failure through sheer luck and bloody-mindedness alone. (“All in all, not bad for an inexperienced 18-year-old girl from southern California, I suppose.”) Giles and Buffy decided she should fast track her way to a psychology degree online under her real name with a concentration in either criminology or forensics so that he could take her globe trotting on many more field training assignments. Faith woke up from her coma before they left and swore vengeance on Buffy before disappearing to LA, not that anyone was aware of her destination. Giles left his store in the capable hands of his most trusted employee, Anya Jenkins, an exemplary business student at UC Sunnydale with admittedly poor people skills. Willow enrolled at MIT and Xander and Jesse joined the army. Buffy let everyone believe that she was just traveling the world while she studied online, and they all kept in touch as best they could.

Things went on in this way until Joyce was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor in the fall when Buffy was 19. Not long after Buffy's 20th birthday, her mother died of complications post-surgery. Buffy convinced Giles to beef up his cover identity and apply for custody of Dawn since as Buffy's handler he could afford to stay stationary longer than she could. She still stuck around for a while in order to be there for Dawn, but she'd finished her Masters by the time Dawn finished middle school and they all decided it was time to move on from Sunnydale. Interpol pulled some strings and enrolled her in the fall session at the FBI Academy under her real name while Giles and Dawn went on to Rome (where, perhaps, the Immortal sets his sights on Dawn?) where Dawn was enrolled in a private boarding school, though she spent the weekends he was home with Giles. Buffy passed the program with flying colors, and Giles proceeded to put her through another six months or so of field training before announcing her ready to fly solo the following summer. It was around this time that Xander sent word to Willow and Buffy that Jesse had been killed in the line of duty.

 

 **Meanwhile,** right around the time of the mayor's arrest, while Buffy and Giles were off traveling the world, Angel O'Connor finally awoke from his coma. The only visitor he'd had since Buffy had been Mr. Whistler, who was listed as his next of kin and who'd ensured he remained on life support. The hospital contacted Whistler, who came and took Angel in and got him on his feet once he was well again. He also confessed about the truth of what happened to his family and why and explained that the Irish were still after him as well as some chick named Darla who happened to be the new head of Aurelius. He told Angel how he and Buffy had been attacked because the mayor of Sunnydale had been after Buffy to try to get to Hank and that Wilkins had been arrested now and that Hank was a fugitive hiding out foreign countries and that Buffy was off somewhere unknown as well, presumably touring the globe while taking her college classes via the internet. That was as much information as Whistler's sources had been able to procure. Angel decided against contacting Buffy orgoing back to school right away and got his PI license and an office instead, with Whistler's help of course.

That November, Whistler sent his cousin, Allen Francis Doyle, Angel's way. Doyle had been on the run from the Irish too after accidentally witnessing a murder. He'd sworn he wouldn't talk but they hadn't believed him, so they'd threatened his wife, who was scared and angry and ended up leaving him without a word to him about it, she just up and disappeared—which in turn made _him_ angry enough to go spill his guts to the cops about everything he'd seen, which eventually resulted in the mob member's conviction. He'd been on the run ever since until Whistler finally offered to help keep him hidden.

Angel and Doyle saved Sunnydale native Cordelia Chase from a Hollywood producer who was a serial rapist and she came to work with them. Over time their team grew, along with their business, which made Whistler's job of keeping them off the Irish mob's and Aurelians' radar that much more difficult. The team also made enemies of Wolfram and Hart, particularly the lawyers Lilah Morgan and Lindsey McDonald.

 

 **Meanwhile,** Spike and Dru were still going strong for the most part, traveling all over the world (for either business or pleasure or, as was more often the case, both), taking whichever contract kills they pleased and thwarting Aurelius at their every opportunity. The only cloud over Spike's otherwise sunny life was that Dru had an unfortunate tendency to sleep around. He had rather thought now that she was free to choose what to do with her body that she'd choose to only sleep with him from now on, but he supposed in hindsight that the notion was rather naïve of him. He hated it, but he would never begrudge Dru her freedom. Besides, they were otherwise blissfully happy, so why risk ruining a good thing?

 

 **In the beginning,** right after Nest was murdered, Darla and Luke were sort of co-heads of Aurelius, what with Darla being the official heir but having only been around for almost-but-not-quite a year and Luke having been Nest's second-in-command for over a decade. However, Darla had a strong head for business and management and had usurped full control of Aurelius' operations by that summer. She still consulted Luke's opinion of course, but she made clear to him that he was only second-in-command and that such was all he'd ever be. She improved the quality of the drugs they manufactured and sold in addition to expanding their empire. She even started a very profitable high class escort service called …?, who's offices served as a front for other Aurelius operations. She made Luke responsible for increasing their weapons trade, which he did exceptionally well and of which she was exceptionally dismissive.

Over the years, Aurelius flourished, but the bad blood between Darla and Luke only grew worse. Eventually, his resentment of Darla, grief for Nest, and sheer hatred for his old protégé, Spike, drove Luke to make a rather drastic decision: he would leave Aurelius behind and turn over any information he had to the International Criminal Court and Interpol if only someone would catch Spike and Dru. Luke went on the run himself, sending messages to Interpol or the ICC as it suited him, saying he would only turn himself in once Spike was dead or at least sentenced to never see the light of day again.

Subsequently, Buffy was charged with either bringing Spike and Dru in dead or alive or (preferably) bringing Luke in alive. Of course, she found Spike first.

 

### Time Line

#### in which B = A + 1, C = B + 1, D = C + 1, etc.

 

##### Birthdays

Drusilla: November 3, Year A – 18
Spike: April 26, Year A – 16
Darla: October 27, Year A – 16
Angel: July 6, Year A – 15
Buffy: January 19, Year A – 12
Faith: December 14, Year A – 10
Dawn: May 30, Year A – 6


 

##### Year A – 9

  * Early December, in London, Drusilla is kidnapped.



##### Year A

  * End of summer, in London, William meets Dru.



##### Year B

  * February 14, in NYC, Angel rapes Darla on Valentine's Day of their sophomore year in high school.
  * Mid-September, in London, Will's mother dies and he goes with Dru and Nest back to Munich.
  * Mid-October, in Munich, Will earns the name Spike.



##### Year C

  * April 26, in Munich, Nest orders Dru gang raped on Spike's birthday.
  * April 27, in Munich, Spike starts training with Luke to be an assassin.



##### Year D

  * Beginning of January, Nest takes Dru with him on business to NYC.
  * Mid-January, in NYC, Darla meets Nest, who's quick to take her under his wing.
  * Mid-March, in NYC, Angel's family is murdered.
  * End of March, Spike's training is complete.
  * Beginning of September, in LA, high school sophomore Buffy meets college freshman Angel.
  * New Year's Eve, in Munich, Spike and Dru murder Nest, rob his home, free his slaves, and disappear.



##### Year E

  * Beginning of January, in Munich, Darla and Luke take over Aurelius.
  * Mid-August, in Munich, Darla takes full control of Aurelius.
  * Halloween, in LA, Buffy is kidnapped, and Angel is put into a coma.
  * End of November, off the San Francisco Bay, Spike finds Buffy and helps break her out.
  * Beginning of December, in San Francisco, Buffy is arrested by SFPD on suspicion of murder but is released before charges are pressed.



##### Year F

  * Beginning of January, in LA, Buffy goes back to school.
  * Early February, in LA, Buffy gets expelled.
  * Mid-February, Buffy and Pike run away to Las Vegas for a couple weeks. In LA, Dawn finds Buffy's confession to the murders of the traffickers in her diary.
  * Beginning of March, in LA, Buffy comes home and is institutionalized.
  * Early to mid-June, in LA, Interpol comes to interview Buffy. She's placed in solitary confinement while she's weaned off the drugs.
  * End of June, in Ireland, Doyle witnesses a high ranking member of the Irish mob commit a murder.
  * Early July, in LA, Interpol comes back and strikes a deal with Buffy inside of a week.
  * Mid-July, in LA, Buffy is released, Hank disappears, the Summers enter witness protection and move to Sunnydale.
  * End of July, in Sunnydale, Buffy meets Giles. In Ireland, Doyle's wife leaves him and Doyle tells all to the police.
  * Late November, in Sunnydale, _The Ted Incident_.
  * End of December, in Sunnydale, Buffy gets her GED.



##### Year G

  * Late spring, in Sunnydale, Buffy discovers why Wilkins is after her father, Faith discovers Buffy's real name and that her father is an enemy of Wilkins and that Buffy herself is an enemy of her, Buffy puts Faith in a coma, Willow cracks the encryptions on Hank's flashdrive and alerts the authorities, Wilkins and his men attack the Summers' home and kill US Marshall Jenny Calendar before being arrested.
  * Early summer, in LA, Angel wakes up. Whistler takes him in to help get him on his feet.
  * Late summer, in LA, Angel gets his license and starts a PI business.
  * Sometime in November, in LA, Whistler sends Doyle to Angel.
  * Mid-December, in LA, Angel and Doyle save Cordelia.



##### Year H

  * Mid-fall, in Sunnydale, Joyce is diagnosed with a benign brain tumor, Buffy ceases her travels to be with family.



##### Year I

  * Last day of February, in Sunnydale, Joyce dies of complications post-surgery.



##### Year J

  * Late spring, in Sunnydale, Buffy gets her Master of Science Degree in Psychology with a concentration in either Criminology or Forensics, Dawn graduates middle school.
  * Fall, Buffy attends the FBI Academy in Quantico, Giles and Dawn move to Rome, Dawn's enrolled in boarding school.



##### Year K

  * Early summer, Jesse dies in the line of duty.
  * Summer, Buffy officially finishes her training with Giles.



##### Year L

  * Beginning of August, Luke goes on the run and contacts law enforcement offering information.
  * Mid-September, Buffy and Spike meet again.




End file.
